


Survival

by Karolina98



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4283163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karolina98/pseuds/Karolina98
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It used to be more people remembered Before, now every time he so much as hints to Before he gets odd looks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survival

**Author's Note:**

> I have issues figuring out the time-line..

It used to be more people remembered Before, now every time he so much as hints to Before he gets odd looks. From disbelief to suspicion. Not that he speaks much at all. His memories don't make sense anymore. His ghosts tell him things, but they're ghosts and shouldn't be taken too seriously. 

 

\----------------------------

 

Once, when he encounters an old old woman as the single survivor of a settlement razed, he takes her to the Citadel. She talks non-stop and he says very little. When he does mention something she stops talking for a long while.

"That was over 22.000 days ago." She says. Max blinks, was it? He's never been very good at counting the days.

 

\-------------------

 

Back when Before was still During, when the world was falling apart, but not just there yet, Max had been stabbed and taken to a hospital. It was a disaster zone and there were many more that needed help than those willing or able to help. He'd been lying on table, bleeding out from a gut-wound, and the doctor (well, maybe not doctor) had been shouting for blood and tools. No one provided either. Then, a memory that had stayed clear and bright until now, the doctor has taken another good look at him and said; 'Sorry man, gotta save those that actually stand a chance' and left him.

He's made weak attempt at grabbing the doctor and shouting hoarsely. The doctor didn't come back, but a young girl did.

"Heard you need blood." She said, and held up an IV line with the clear intent of starting a direct vein-to-vein transfusion between the both of them.

"No." He'd protested weakly, not only was she clearly not medical personnel, she looked to be in terrible shape. Her clothes were stained solid with blood, he was surprised she had any left to offer.

"You wanna live?" She's asked with a smirk. He must have made a sound.

"Do you want to survive Max? Really?" The girl has steely eyes and he must have said yes. He blacked out before the needle hits his vein.

When he woke up he felt terrible, but he was unmistakably alive. 

"Hey, I thought I didn't operate on you?" The same doctor as before says while inspecting his stomach. _You didn't._ Max wants to say, _you left me to die_. The wound is large and jagged and dirty, but has healed over messily. The doctor gives him a puzzled look and a 'huh', before being called away by more screaming and crying.

When Max has hauled himself up and is ready to check himself out he encounters the girl again. She looks fine now; no cuts, no bruises, no favouring of limbs.

"Thanks." He remembers saying.

"Sorry." He remembers her saying.

\--------------------

 

 _Heals fast_ it used to say on his back. That was true, especially considering a general lack of food and water.

 _Multiple scars_ it used to say on his back. Also true, but he doesn't think they're always the same scars.

 

\----------------------

 

He meets Ally again, somewhere, somehow. She's thinner, and it's not a good look on her, but she's in perfect condition. Quite like him.

"Heard you were there when they crossed the line?" She asks over a dinner of old canned goods. He grunts in question.

"The line between Disaster and Apocalypse. The no-going-back line. The fact that this whole planet is now fucked." She sounds different than other people when they talk about it. Most are angry, afraid, grieving. The world didn't end in a day, but Ally sounds like she still doesn't quite believe it. That and mockingly fascinated. Max grunts in the affirmative, yeah, he supposed he was there.

"Sorry." She says again. "Just lost my husband back then, I wasn't thinking straight." She pats his wrist and then grins, slightly maniacal. "Even so, I think you can make it work Max Rockatansky."

 

\-------------------

 

He remembers begging for the lives of his wife and child. He remember begging _her_ for the lives of his wife and child.

"Can't raise the dead Max." She told him.

 

\-------------------

 

Once, he and Ally end up chained to rig about to blow. Ally severs her own right hand, takes the keys off a corpse and releases him. They make it out just in time.

"Like a wolf." She says when she notices him looking horrified at her bleeding stump, and she definitely looks feral.

Later, at an encampment, people have been kind to them, treated their wounds, given them food and water. The conversation heads to the wars over gas and Ally says;

"Bastards should have invested in solar, they had options." One of the men vocally disagrees, the teenagers don't even know what it means.

 

\-----------------------

 

"I used to be cop." Max says.

"Bit young for that aint you laddie?" The old man replies.

 

\-------------------------

 

"Oh, I've known Ally me whole life." The old woman tells him. They all know time is running out and Ally is desperately holding on to the woman's hand. Not crying, not yet. "My daddy was mean sober and violent when he was drunk. Ally here," the old woman says it like the noun, the opposite of enemy, "raised me better than that bastard ever could." Max isn't good a ages anymore. But Sia, the old woman, must be at least 75. 

They watch from a distance as Sia blows her house sky-high, with herself and her enemies in it. Now Ally is crying, loud, choking sobs. The kind of heartbreak Max didn't think had survived the end of the world. Max can only witness. He's not sure Ally is his friend. Ally, Ally without scars and two hands, who is younger than he and is mourning a friend she's know for longer than he's been alive. He wants to ask, but he's not sure what he's asking and he's not sure how to ask.

"It doesn't always work." Ally answers anyway, sniffing. "Or I won't let it work." Max thinks of those that steal blood of anyone half-healthy in pursuit of extending their own lives. "Or, like Sia, not everyone wants it to work."

 

\-------------

 

The only thing that never heals is his damn knee.

 

\----------------

 

"Never thought you'd go around, spreading the love." Ally greets him. He's back at the Spires, not the first time. She looks perfect, curvier and shiny and she smiles a secret smile while nodding at Furiosa and Nux. Max blinks. That had never occurred to him. But he hadn't been surprised when Furiosa's arm seemed longer every time he came back.

"I.."

"I like them, 'm just saying. Not everyone is cut-out for survival." Ally bumps her shoulder against his. He supposes they are friends.

"They are." He claims.

"Suppose so." Ally agrees. She's apparently on her way out. "I like it here, it a good thing. Could've done worse."

 

_________________

 

Ally returns to the Spires regularly and sometimes their visits coincide. This time she's brought her husband, though not the one Max remembers being dead in a field hospital all those days ago. He hopes not anyway. Miss Giddy speaks of biology and what she learned about plants and such when she was in school as a young girl. Ally comments and Miss Giddy seems happy enough to discuss plant life cycles and crop rotation. Then, when Ally walks off to bed Miss Giddy shakes her head. 

"Never thought I'd see one of them in my life."

 

 


End file.
